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Category: Health

Just 12 people are behind most vaccine hoaxes on social media, research shows

Just 12 people are behind most vaccine hoaxes on social media, research shows

NPR reports: Researchers have found just 12 people are responsible for the bulk of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. “The ‘Disinformation Dozen’ produce 65% of the shares of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” said Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which identified the accounts. Now the vaccine rollout is reaching a critical stage in which most adults who want the vaccine have…

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Vaccines seem to work well against coronavirus variants. It’s also complicated

Vaccines seem to work well against coronavirus variants. It’s also complicated

STAT reports: The question about how Covid-19 vaccines stand up to coronavirus variants often gets distilled to: Do they work? The simplest answer is yes. People who’ve received one of the highly powerful vaccines don’t need to be too worried about the variants for now, experts say. But the complete answer is more complicated. The real question isn’t whether the vaccines work, but how well they do. Even the best vaccines allow some “breakthrough infections” — infections in people who’ve…

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How a small city in Brazil may reveal how fast vaccines can curb Covid

How a small city in Brazil may reveal how fast vaccines can curb Covid

Science News reports: The city of Serrana in Brazil is a living experiment. The picturesque place, surrounded by sugarcane fields, is nestled in the southeast of one of the countries hit hardest by COVID-19. By the end of March, daily deaths in Brazil surged to 3,000 on average a day, a high in a pandemic that has claimed more than 405,000 lives there — the second worst death toll of any country in the world behind only the United States….

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CDC Covid messaging has persistently lagged behind scientific findings

CDC Covid messaging has persistently lagged behind scientific findings

STAT reports: Nearly a year ago, amid concerns about how to prevent transmission of the virus causing Covid-19, scientists were beginning to conclude that rigorous disinfection of surfaces — say, fogging them or deep-cleaning with bleach — was overkill. Academics were warning that the risk of so-called fomite transmission was wildly overblown. In the fall, research from Israel and Italy found that the virus couldn’t even be cultured from surfaces in hospital infectious disease units. By February of this year,…

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Covid lays bare the price of populism

Covid lays bare the price of populism

Uri Friedman writes: As populism has experienced a resurgence in recent years, many have focused on the hazards the ideology poses to democratic systems. But today’s complex and highly technical global threats—pandemics, climate change, cyberattacks, financial crises—that demand technocratic solutions have driven home a grim reality: Populism can place us all at risk. In 2018, a burst of anger over government corruption propelled a populist politician named Jair Bolsonaro to Brazil’s presidency. Brazil, which is currently suffering from one of…

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Free beer offer in Buffalo results in more vaccinations than all Erie County, NY first-dose clinics last week

Free beer offer in Buffalo results in more vaccinations than all Erie County, NY first-dose clinics last week

The Buffalo News reports: The idea of getting vaccinated had been rolling around in the back of Tyler Morsch’s mind for weeks. As a 28-year-old, he didn’t feel in any particular danger, but he finally decided he should start looking for a Covid-19 vaccination clinic this week. Then he heard the magic words. “Free beer,” he said. Saturday was the first day that Erie County worked with a local microbrewery to host its Shot and a Chaser program, offering individuals…

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Why did it take so long for Covid aerosol transmission to be officially confirmed?

Why did it take so long for Covid aerosol transmission to be officially confirmed?

Zeynep Tufekci writes: A few sentences have shaken a century of science. A week ago, more than a year after the World Health Organization declared that we face a pandemic, a page on its website titled “Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19): How Is It Transmitted?” got a seemingly small update. The agency’s response to that question had been that “current evidence suggests that the main way the virus spreads is by respiratory droplets” — which are expelled from the mouth and quickly…

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Stopping drug patents has stopped pandemics before

Stopping drug patents has stopped pandemics before

Laurie Garrett writes: U.S. President Joe Biden’s waiver of patent protections for U.S.-made COVID-19 drugs and vaccines is a historic milestone and a moral imperative. It is also an overdue acknowledgement of recent experiences. Contrary to prognostications from the pharmaceutical sector that side-stepping the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) component of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will mark the death knell of the drug industry, the world’s response to HIV/AIDS long ago demonstrated that patents stymie accessible treatment,…

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If we want to save the planet, the future of food is insects

If we want to save the planet, the future of food is insects

Richard Godwin writes: My first attempts at feeding insects to friends and family did not go down well. “What the hell is wrong with you?” asked my wife when I revealed that the tomato and oregano-flavoured cracker bites we had been munching with our G&Ts were made from crickets. “Hang on, I’m vegetarian!” cried our friend – which prompted a slightly testy discussion on whether insects count as meat, how many thousand arthropods equate to one mammal and considering almost…

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India is hiding its Covid crisis – and the whole world will suffer for it

India is hiding its Covid crisis – and the whole world will suffer for it

Ankita Rao writes: A few years ago, as Narendra Modi came into power, I worked on an investigative report about India hiding its malaria deaths. In traveling from tribal Odisha to the Indian national health ministry in New Delhi, my colleague and I watched thousands of cases disappear: some malaria deaths, first noted in handwritten local health ledgers, never appeared in central government reports; other malaria deaths were magically transformed into deaths of heart attack or fever. The discrepancy was…

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New study estimates more than 900,000 people have died from Covid in U.S.

New study estimates more than 900,000 people have died from Covid in U.S.

NPR reports: A new study estimates that the number of people who have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. is more than 900,000, a number 57% higher than official figures. Worldwide, the study’s authors say, the COVID-19 death count is nearing 7 million, more than double the reported number of 3.24 million. The analysis comes from researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, who looked at excess mortality from March 2020 through May 3, 2021,…

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U.S. support for Covid vaccine patent waivers puts pressure on EU and UK

U.S. support for Covid vaccine patent waivers puts pressure on EU and UK

Sarah Boseley writes: It was a “seismic decision” by Joe Biden, the US president, say campaigners who have fought for the demolition of patent protection on vaccines and drugs for decades. The US administration has amazed supporters and critics alike by throwing its considerable weight behind the pleas of South Africa, India and about 100 developing countries at the World Trade Organization to overturn patents on Covid vaccines in the interests of getting more of them, more cheaply and faster,…

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‘Turning the corner’: U.S. Covid outlook reaches most hopeful point yet

‘Turning the corner’: U.S. Covid outlook reaches most hopeful point yet

The New York Times reports: After weeks of coronavirus patients flooding emergency rooms in Michigan, the worst Covid-19 hot spot in the nation, hospitalizations are finally falling. On some recent days, entire states, including Wisconsin and West Virginia, have reported zero new coronavirus deaths — a brief but promising respite from the onslaught of the past year. And in New York and Chicago, officials encouraged by the recent progress have confidently vowed to fully reopen in the coming weeks, conjuring…

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Covid in Varanasi: Anger rises as coronavirus rages in Modi’s constituency

Covid in Varanasi: Anger rises as coronavirus rages in Modi’s constituency

BBC News reports: City residents say the first signs of trouble became visible in March. As cases spiked in Delhi and Mumbai and authorities there began imposing restrictions, migrant workers began returning home to their villages in and around Varanasi [whose MP, Narendra Modi, is India’s prime minister] on overcrowded trains, buses and trucks. Many came home for the Holi festival on 29 March or to vote in the village council elections on 18 April – held against advice from…

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Once a Covid hotspot, Italian village now intrigues researchers with ‘super-immune’ cases

Once a Covid hotspot, Italian village now intrigues researchers with ‘super-immune’ cases

NBC News reports: Paola Bezzon thought her sniffles in December were just a seasonal cold until a serology test months later found coronavirus antibodies in her blood. And not just normal levels of antibodies. Researchers say she is “super-immune” — a person whose body seems to make more antibodies than normal. “I don’t know why I have all these antibodies, but they are such a lifeline for me,” she said. “They make me feel safe even though I haven’t had…

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Reaching ‘herd immunity’ is unlikely in the U.S., experts now believe

Reaching ‘herd immunity’ is unlikely in the U.S., experts now believe

The New York Times reports: Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives. Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are…

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